Famed Japanese businessman and politician (and former pro wrestler) Antonio Inoki made news this week when he traveled to North Korea for five days to attend North Korea's Foundation and to conduct talks over NK's recent nuclear tests.

While in NK, Inoki met with Ri Su Yong, vice chairman of Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, to discuss the North's development of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.. Ri served as the ambassador to Switzerland when NK leader Kim Jong Un was a student there, and is thought to have some influence. The pair only met for about one hour and 15 minutes though.

At a news conference at Haneda Airport upon his return, Inoki quoted Ri as saying (from an Asahi News article), "that North Korea will continue to experiment and raise (its weapons’) level even more as long as the United States and the international community continue to apply pressure upon the country."

We've blogged about retired basketball star Dennis Rodman's many pseudo-diplomatic trips to North Korea, but Inoki has been to North Korea nearly 30 times (!) to conduct diplomatic missions and cultural exchanges. Inoki has stated that he feels that diplomatic isolation is useless since cutting off communications can only worsen relations.

Inoki also is popular in the North. Not only did he train with Rikidozan, a famous Korean-Japanese wrestler who was the sport's top draw in the 1950s, but in 1995, he staged a major wrestling promotion in Pyongyang called the Collision in Korea, which drew a world record tv audience for a wrestling event. Inoki brought then-popular American wrestler Ric Flair for the main event match between Flair and himself.

​North Korea isn't the only dangerous place that Inoki has conducted his unofficial one-man diplomatic missions. In 1990, before the start of the Persian Gulf War, Inoki traveled to Baghdad to meet with Saddam Hussein to successfully secure the release of 41 Japanese hostages being held by Iraq. He also managed to put on a wrestling event in Iraq during that time, as part of the hostage negotiation. A wrestling event and the release of hostages! Who else could have managed that feat?

​Inoki is probably best known in the West for his 1976 mixed boxing-martial arts match with world champion Muhammed Ali. The event was a draw, but Inoki's promotional skills in putting on the event, not to mention his showing in the ring with Ali, catapulted him into international superstardom.

This May marks the 85th anniversary of the May 15 Plot, the 1932 assassination of the Japanese Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai, part of an attempted coup d'etat by military officers. The assassins killed PM Inukai at his home, and then drove themselves directly to the police and confessed. The plotters also attacked some other politicians and important buildings. The overall plot failed to overthrow the government, yet it still marked a victory for the militaristic right-wing and the beginning of the end of democracy in pre-war Japan, as the PM's killers were let off with slaps on the wrist.

​What moves this sad incident into the realm of Weird IR is the not-so-well-thought-out side plot to also kill world famous superstar Charlie Chaplin. The plotters planned to carry out the assassination at the exact time that the actor best known to the world as The Tramp was visiting Japan and staying at the PM's residence.

PM Tsuyoshi Inukai

The plotters had hoped to kill Chaplin in the hopes that his death would drag the U.S. into war with Japan. Yes, Chaplin really was that important a movie star at the time, but would his death have triggered a U.S.-Japan war? Probably not. The junior officers behind the plot obviously weren't the smartest people around.

How did Chaplin escape death? He happened to be out at a sumo match that night with Inukai's son, Takeru Inukai (who would later become a noted politician in his own right). Four sumo tournaments a year occurred during that era, and the May 1932 tournament, at which Chaplin was in the audience on at least one night, was won by Tamanishiki Sanemon, a great big chap who dominated the sport in the 1930s.

If you happen to watch some of the many Chinese war films that have come out in the last few years, and you think you're noticed the Japanese soldiers in each movie, it's ok, your eyes aren't playing tricks on you.

The Japan Times posted a feature on Hirotaka Tsukagoshi, a Japanese actor making a living in China's film industry. Tsukagoshi specializes in playing a "Japanese devil", usually a Japanese imperial army officer, in some of China's frequent war movies. As another article puts it, he's paid to be evil and die a 1,000 times a year.

According to the Japan Times article, he's one of only a dozen Japanese actors working in the Chinese film and movie industry. Given that the films can be partially blamed for the bad view that many Chinese have of Japanese, one wonders how it feels to play a type of person that is so hated in the country where one works. I suppose these actors can say they're living their dream of working as an actor, but is it worth the paycheck?

One anecdote of Hirotaka's of the dangers of being such a "character actor" comes from this article: [Hirotaka] was lying on the ground, pretending to have passed out, and was waiting for the director to shout ‘Cut!’ Suddenly an old woman ran up and grabbed his neck tightly, shouting at the top of her lungs: ‘You little Japanese devils!’ The director was confused for a short while, believing that one of the villagers had been hired as an extra. But then he noticed the expression on Hirotaka’s face and quickly had the old woman dragged away.

I'm stepping into the world of punditry today and offering a list of the weirdos who I think will have the greatest impact in IR in 2013. Suggestions and criticisms are welcome!DBM

WEIRDO #5: Silvio Berlusconi

Is Italy ready for the reign of King Silvio IV? The man who once called the Italian Republic "this shitty country" when he was its acting Prime Minster is poised to win next month's election. If he wins, Europe's #1 chauvinist will have to work with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a woman he once called fat.

Where in the world is Hugo?

WEIRDO #4: Hugo Chavez's Cuban Puppet Masters

After winning his third re-election, Venezeulan President Hugo Chavez had to put off his inauguration due to illness. He's laid up in a Cuban hospital and hasn't been seen in weeks. There are fears that he's on life support or under the influence of the Cuban government. Who's in charge?

Pointing the blame upstairs

WEIRDO #3: U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK)

This Oklahoman is my dark horse weirdo for 2013. The international community is calling for real action on climate change, which it cannot achieve without U.S. cooperation. The septuagenerian who first campaigned on "God, Guns, and Gays," has maintained that anthropogenic climate change is impossible because only God can change the environment, and he wouldn't do that to us.

до свидания

WERIDO #2: Vladimir PutinLast year, the Russian President dressed up as a giant bird and led a group of Siberian Cranes on their winter migration. He's salvaged shipwrecks, caressed octopi, and swam with dolphins. He's a judo master and likes to take his shirt off for photo ops. What's next for Putin? I hope he joins the cast of Expendables 3, but we'll just have to wait and see in 2013.

He'd rather be playing Sega

TOP WEIRDO TO WATCH IN 2013Kim Jong UnIs anyone else still sort of stunned that this guy is in charge of the DPRK? He only got the job because his older brother was busted trying to visit Tokyo Disneyland with a fake Dominican passport under the name "Fat Bear." Yet, Jong-Un was the SECOND choice. This Supreme Leader-by-Default recently threatened to target the United States with ICBMs and attack the ROK

The dispute in the East China Sea between China and Japan is escalating as we speak. The Japanese government has signed the purchase contract to buy some of the disputed islands from the wealthy Japanese Kurihara family, in defiance of Chinese demands.

China has reacted by sending two patrol vessels to a location near the islands. This could provoke a counter move from Japan, which is known to keep coast guard vessels on patrol near to the islands for landings by Chinese activists and fishermen. The situation is not good for relations between Japan and China.

Adding to the uncertainty of the problem is the unknown whereabouts of Xi Jinping, the Chinese heir apparent to Hu Jintao. Xi is set to take control of the Communist Party later this year, but he has suddenly cancelled several public meetings with foreign dignitaries, including the US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. Keep your eye on this story.

Apologies for sticking with the island disputes topic again, but the island dispute crisis in East Asia is deepening. If these were earlier times, my bet is these countries would already be at war....

On Wednesday, Aug 15, 14 Chinese activists landed on the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, which are controlled by Japan by claimed by China and Taiwan. The 14 were apprehended by the Japanese and handed over on Saturday, Aug 18 to authorities in Hong Kong.

On the same day, 150 Japanese activists, including eight parliamentarians, landed on the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands and planted the Japanese flag, causing protests from the Chinese government.

The islands, whose location is shown below, are located south of the enormous Chunxiao natural gas and oil fields. Control of the islands therefore grants the controlling country EEZ rights around the islands.

So for Japan, controlling these islands gives them more EEZ area in the ocean, which gives them a greater share of these oil and natural gas fields, as we can see in the picture to the left.

A little background: Japan has controlled the islands since 1895, when it declared the islands to be terra nullius and incorporated them into Okinawa Prefecture. In 1951, six years fter the end of WWII, Japan signed a treaty affirming that they gave up the rights to territories gained from their period of imperialism between 1895 and 1945. But the U.S. controlled these islands along with Okinawa at this time, so they were not given back to China, who was busy with a revolution and a change of government and did not protest. When the U.S. was negotiating the terms of the Okinawa reversion with Japan in the late 1960s, a UN energy commission found the deposits of oil and natural gas in the East China Sea, and China began protesting the turnover of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands to Japan along with Okinawa.

The nationalist Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara has been seeking to buy the lease for the islands from the Japanese family that controls the largest islands for some time now (naturally he wants to buy them on the part of the Tokyo city government, with taxpayer money). Putting the control of this hot issue in the hands of a known nationalist can lead to nothing but trouble for Sino-Japanese relations.

We hear a lot in the U.S. media about "Chinese netizens" without necessarily getting to hear or read about what these masses actually discuss (unless of course you happen to read Chinese and frequently peruse weibo.com).

Well, if you're really interested, the website chinaSMACK.com makes life much easier. The editors at chinaSMACK select popular stories drawing attention in among Chinese netizens, and then they select and translate into English comments left by readers of these stories that they feel are "popular, representative, or interesting."

Many Chinese netizens marveled at the patience of the Japanese in the wake of the disaster, as they lined up and waited indefinitely at train stations, emergency evacuation zones, and at stores for basic necessities. Many wondered what the response would be like in China.

I have to say, Japanese patience might have more soft power value than their anime characters....

Japan watchers have been aware of this story for a few years now but it's worth repeating here for the purposes of completeness in cataloging the world's weird stories of IR. In 2009, in an attempt to boil down its soft power into three archetypal character types, Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs deputized three part-time models to the official positions of Kawaii (cute) Ambassadors. The three characters are Schoolgirl, Gyaru (gal) girl, and Lolita, played by Shizuka Fujioka, Yu Kimura, and Misako Aoki. Where's the ever-popular samurai character, you may ask? Soft power describes how a nation might use its popular cultural and appealing, well-functioning institutions of governance to gain favor and better relations with others. Samurai represent Japan's violent past, and would thus be counterproductive to Japan's attempt to display its softer side to its East Asian neighbors.

The Lolita Ambassador, widely thought to be the most experienced diplomat among the three, was immediately sent to Moscow to for talks with a group of Russian Lolitas.

Just as discussion turned to the delicate issue of the return of the Kurile Islands however, the talks were broken up by a group of hardliner Gothic Lolitas, who demanded pictures be taken immediately.

Does soft power work? It's an appealing idea, and students love to discuss this in class. But I've challenged students over the last few years to come up with a research design that could test the concept, with no takers yet. While pop culture can appeal to (subcultures of) youth of other nations, it probably does not translate very well into changes toward pro-Japan policies. Meanwhile, Japan's often dysfunctional institutions of governance are likely to have zero appeal for other nations. What does work well in promoting good relations, on the other hand, is something Japan has been good at for a long time: official developmental assistance, i.e. monetary aid.